Introducing the #366 Challenges

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about two things; reading challenges and writing challenges. Or, for the non-writers out there, the wider framework was to have a passive, learning-based challenge coupled with an action-challenge.

Today, I’m going to build some momentum and energy and finally get around to posting what I’m up to as far as these huge challenges I’ve alluded to are.

This encompasses my front-facing, personal-brandesque work challenges for the year. We’ll start with my reading challenge and segue into writing challenges.

(I’ll probably write about these each in a separate post in more detail later.)

The Ray Bradbury Challenge

Ray Bradbury is a pulp writer from yesteryear. His recommendation for budding writers was to do the following for 1,000 days:

• Read a short story by a great author
• Read an essay by a great author
• Read a poem by a great author

He then suggested writing a short story every week for a year.

I write a lot, and I want to be good at it. I’ll be a lot more methodical than previous writers, because creating efficient systems for learning is something I excel at.

Instead of writing a short story a day for a year, here’s what I plan to do on the fiction writing front.

The Short Fiction #366 Challenge

I’ve had to rename all these challenges in the past day because I realised, when looking at the diary, we’re in a leap year. So apologies if I refer to any of these as a #365 Challenge.

Basically though, I’m going to create a short story for every day of the year in 2024. Some will be microfiction, most will be short stories of between 3,000-10,000 words, and some will no doubt be novella-length.

I am obviously behind on the publishing of these, but I’ll get up to schedule and get a site up for fiction and the goal is that within a week or two, you’ll be able to follow along.

The goal is threefold;

1. To get better at story writing and all aspects of writing
2. To have a lot of stories out in the world – for fun, profit and legacy
3. So I have a business that’s unrelated to this blog and thus can prove I’m not just a “make money online telling other guys to make money”

There are a few other goals and targets which I’ll cover in due course, but for the majority of the readers of this blog, you’re all entrepreneurial types who might be interested more so in what I can teach you rather than my fictional output.

So onto the next Challenge.

The Vault #366 Challenge

Onto the oft-rumoured “Vault” that I’ve been cooking up for several years. Abandoning, going back to, forgetting about, remembering, planning – endless planning – and scrapping to rewrite everything.

It’s the Necronomicon of lifechanging business and life advice from the most enigmatic copywriter-turned-sorcerer on the internet. A tome of Black Hat Life Hacks briefly mentioned with awe by those who’ve seen some of its contents, and dreamed of by those who wish to drink its wisdom.

That stops soon, because I’m committed to creating at least three-hundred and sixty-six entries for the vault this year.

It will take the form mostly of online course materials that’ll take you through building online businesses of various kinds, books that’ll aid you in entrepreneurship and life, and additional, supplemental materials covering everything from how to write better through to investing through to using the power of your will to alter the universe around you.

The course materials are the skeleton forms of what’ll be six-week courses that I’ll later sell (or maybe not, baby steps) covering a specific aspect of online business.

The books; well, they’ll be 30-40 essay-chapters that I’ll later release as standalone books.

And the odd stuff, well, it’ll probably be seed materials and case studies for future expansion.

So that’s the Vault. Let me talk about little miscellany while I’m here.

Miscellaneous Reading and Writing Bits

Blog #366

I’ve already started on the blog posts. I’m also committed to writing one of these every day for the next year.

What I’ve found in the past two weeks is that simply writing an article that comes to me at 5pm on the day I write it is unsatisfying at best and a complete waste of time at worst.

And I sat down a couple of days ago to figure out what was going wrong. The major takeaway from that brainstorming session was that I need to stop avoiding the big things, and the little things will take care of themselves.

At the very least, once the above challenges are underway, I will always have something to write about.

Social Media

It’s no surprise to anyone here that I’m not a fan of social media. I basically abandoned it a couple of years ago and can’t really say I’m up for using it again like a normie.

However…

I believe that social media profiles are all, to some extent, hypersigil devices.

I will talk in greater detail about these later, (and taking over one platform at a time is great fodder for Vault courses,) but there’s huge potential there providing we approach these sites with deliberate intent.

Part of that intent is being active and visible on the platforms whilst limiting actual exposure. That’s a challenge in and of itself.

Social media will always be a backburner thing for me, but I aim to become more active, even if it’s only in syndicating content there.

Final Thoughts

I’ve procrastinated a long time on some of these projects, and only thought of others. However, the focus for 2024 is in many ways testing just how much I can create and fire out into the universe, and in turn seeing what that brings.

These projects will keep me very busy, add structure to my work and force me out of creative hibernation and into action.

And they’ll launch very soon. The sand timer is running down on all of them.

See you in the next one; I have work to do.

P.S. you know the drill; all relevant things will go in the Vault once it’s up, blog posts that are updates are coming just like my previous challenges from all those years ago. Get in nerds, we’re about to hijack reality.